


the very best girl (and i am)

by x (ordinary)



Series: excerpts fit for a wasteland [non-canon] [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Feral Ghoul, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 04:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5320325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd always known that ending up feral was inevitable.</p><p>No one ever imagined that it'd be something like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the very best girl (and i am)

**Author's Note:**

> for the one word prompt "feral"

**i.**

Their love was wild and unbridled: no one held its reins, and with their eyes rolling and their bodies running, running, running-- neither of them cared, so long as it never stopped. Their love was a tempest, leaving behind wreckage anywhere it went, chewing up anything that crossed it with smiles made of chainsaw teeth, cutting through cloth and flesh, blood and bone, rust and stardust. Their love was just enough: he was the order in her chaos, and she was the violence raining fire with a guided hand, a force of nature to be harnessed for a cause.

In the end, their love was not a love at all, because she could not feel it. Because his life stretched on into eternity and hers was so painfully, painfully short. Because when dealing with ghouls, the word feral haunted every dusty corner of the mind, an ever-looming presence. Inevitable. Inescapable. Irredeemable.

 

**ii.**

It's been posited that sudden, high doses of radiation can both turn a healthy human into a ghoul, as well as accelerate a normal ghoul's descent into the mindless hunger that defined a feral ghoul. It's been posited, too, that extended social isolation can reduce the activity in key areas of the brain keeping the curse of feral at bay. Stimulation is recommended, to preserve sanity. Abandonment is not advised. Loss is warned to be a catalyst.

 

**iii.**

The bomb fell in the dead of night, just a few miles away from Hangman's Alley. The cracking boom rang out through the night, and Felicia looked up at the lightening sky. Someone flipped the switch on the emergency siren, but the bomb was so _close_. The mushroom cloud was within sight, just like before, and she gazed upon the orange plumes with knowing eyes. She'd only seen it once, but the sight of it was all too familiar, a sight she'd never forget. In a way, it made her nostalgic for a different time, when she'd been less a whirlwind of danger and more a demure housewife with an ugly wit and the scar to match. When she hadn't had to think about her own death on a daily basis.

When she hadn't felt the urge to try and truly feel, because it was hurting her, now, in great stabbing pains. 

 

**iv.**

Hancock found her at the tall guard station, not long after she'd instructed everyone to scatter to the wind. If she'd had it her way, Felicia would have told them it was futile, to give up, to accept death gracefully-- but it was better for them to hope. That's what he'd taught her, so many times.

So she lied to them, with the smile she wore for strangers on his behalf, comforting people as they left with a hand on the shoulder or a quick hug, and every single one was a dagger in her side. Now, Hancock pulled at her wrist, pleading with her to go, to run, to do anything but stay and face the inevitable, the dreadful, the unthinkable. It was no use: his words fell on deaf ears. She knew what was coming. The remnants of its greater predecessor were still strewn all around every city, in every house and building, in the ghouls from the days before. 

Felicia looked at him without any emotion at all, her eyes dark and dead, exhausted despite her lethargy.

"No," she said, quiet and firm, ducking her head to press one last kiss to his forehead. Wetness fell on his brow, her own tears unbidden. Her loss, her could-haves and should-haves. The wind grew faster, debris flying through the alley, taking bricks and shattering glass along the way. The familiar ache of radiation setting into her bones returned, an old friend by now, soon to be her final lover's embrace.

"Leesha," he said, and in her name was a broken heart, was loss excised from him with a surgical tool, was all that he loved dying before her heart stopped.

With a head full of static and gauze, Felicia continued to cry, and soon the tears began to sizzle off her face, already disconnected from her body, out of her body, incorporeal.

"Don't," she said, barely audible through the crushing wind, "I don't love you, John Hancock. But you made me wish I cou-"

 

**v.**

Hancock roused outside the alley with his clothes torn to tatters but his mind intact, and for a brief moment he wondered if that might be worse than the alternative. His knees and wrists ached more than ever, and new scars disfigured him further, but it was nothing more than the every day trials and tribulations of a ghoul. Nothing in comparison to everything else.

He'd survived, but she hadn't, same for any of the other settlers that had tried to run away on foot. He made his way through the wreckage of the burgeoning settlement they'd been building together, looking for evidence that anyone might have survived. But there was nothing save a pile of bodies halfway blown into the street, their clothes burnt and their skin seared clean off, their clothes in burnt tatters. All of the bodies were missing bits and pieces: skulls shattered, rib-cages exposed, legs bent in ways they shouldn't be. Arms missing.

Like Felicia's. Kneeling by her corpse, Hancock gently cradled it to his chest, weeping without any tears, grief overflowing. 

 

**vi.**

Time passed, as it always did. Days turned, months waxed, years culminated growth and decay in a single breath. The Minutemen had maintained, but there was no more explosive growth, not with their General gone. The Brotherhood of Steel moved out of the area, not because of Felicia's death but because they needed to regroup themselves after tremendous losses. The Railroad's headquarters had collapsed, and while a few made it out in time, there was a lot of rebuilding to do before they could ever do something good on that scale again.

And the Institute suffered naught.

 

**vii.**

Hunger. An unseeing snarl, lips curled back always, forever, disfigured and misshapen, lost but the only thing that mattered to find was a feast. What kind of feast? Didn't matter. Doesn't matter. Lope towards something Other and eat it, claw it and rend it. Destroy it until it is nothing, consume the proof of death and gain its power. Peel back the flesh and revel in the violence that is now in the blood, radiation pumping to the heart, one two, one two, thump thump, thump thump. There is nothing but eating. Hunger. An unseeing snarl. There is nothing but hurting. There is nothing, and no one inside you: there is an impulse, a desire, an instinct, a reduction of a total sum zero, zero, zero, emptied out, hollow-headed and hollow-hearted. Hunger. An unseeing snarl. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Live forever. Rinse. Repeat. Destroy the Other. Rinse. Repeat. Empty. Empty. A husk. A shell. A body, not a person. A casing, not a bullet. A bag with no meat. Hunger. An unseeing snarl. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. **Rinse. Repeat.**

 

**viii.**

Preston looked even more concerned than ever, even as lines of age weathered his skin, graying his hair around the temples. "We have to put them down," he coaxed, gentle, friendly, and while none of the companions had ever been close, most of them had gathered together for this decision. He'd been hers, after all, the threads of his life intertwined with Felicia's, it was only right. "I don't want to do this either, trust me. But would I say it if we had _any_ other choice?" 

 

**ix.**

From the cage, Felicia howled in rage, pounding her fists against the bulletproof glass of a safe room, the shattered remains of a Pip-Boy still locked around her wrist and rattling. It was her, all right, because the burns had persisted through the transformation, even if her hair was gone and the rest of her was gone too, scooped out with nothing to replace it all.

Hancock clutched his gun, not the same one as the days before, but the same model she'd always carried, a .50 caliber sniper rifle capable of death at range and at point blank. It was only just. It was only right. It was the only way, because he knew better than anyone that she was never coming back.

Not from this.

"Open the damn door already," he snapped, and he was so tired already, and selfishly wished she'd just turned _normal_ ghoul. Selfishly wished he'd not been told. Selfishly wished she'd just _died_. (Selfishly wished he had, too.)

MacCready shook his head, unlocking the door with the terminal, immediately pulling back as soon as he heard the mechanism click. The scratching and spitting intensified, and the feral thing that had been Felicia  _knew_ that there was flesh out there, to be consumed, to be destroyed. It had been her first instinct in anything, in everything, and now it was her only one. The door gave, and she  _lunged_ , claws out and teeth diving directly for his neck--

But she was dead before then, a bullet through the neck severing all connections to the brain that kept that degenerating body alive, and her limp corpse fell into his arms. This time, Hancock sunk to the ground, clutching it with no weeping, no grand professions, no nothing. 

He hadn't moved on, but he had learned to cope, and that would have to do. 

 

**x.**

He would fade into obscurity, he decided. Just for a while. Goodneighbor was in good hands and the rest of the Commonwealth would just have to deal, but they already had for the past twenty years. He packed up the best he could, bringing with him rations and ammo and no personal effects, not even his coat and hat. Dogmeat was dead but she'd had pups, and those pups had grown up to have pups, and now Mongrelsteak sat loyally at his side.

Maybe it was time, John decided, to find a new name. To find a new cause. To find himself, again, and heal. Really and truly.

 

**0.**

It's been posited that extended social isolation can reduce the activity in key areas of the brain keeping the curse of feral at bay. Stimulation is recommended, to preserve sanity. Abandonment is not advised. Loss is warned to be a catalyst. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is, fwiw, a non-canon what if scenario, while the previous three are all canon.
> 
> catch me at [my tumblr](http://lurks-beneath.me/). prompts are always open.


End file.
